Daily Archives: April 1, 2003

Happy April Fool’s Day. I hope you’re telling someone a big fat lie even as I type this. I haven’t done a major April Fool’s prank since the time I convinced the woman who was trying to prank me into thinking she got a new job (she was looking to get a job with me at AOL at the time) that I had taken her seriously and given the job I had open for her to someone else. There’s nothing sweeter than pranking those who are trying to prank you, especially when it involves money and/or employment. Alas, these days, the only people I have to prank are the pets, and they’re no fun. The cats would just run away and the dog will merely look up at me with her sad, sad eyes, as if to say, but why would you want to prank me? I love you. Stupid unconditional love.

In celebration of April Fool’s Day, however, allow me exhume an April Fool’s Guide to Pranking that I wrote, um, about seven years ago. And let me just say, good friggin’ lord, am I getting old. Enjoy.

Other people are celebrating April Fool’s, but April 1 has a different significance for me this year — it’s the opening of book season, the period in which my primary occupation will be grinding through the books I have contracted to write this year. In order to do so, I’ve largely cleared the deck of most freelance work except for a couple of specific clients who help me cover the mortgage, and I’ll be adopting (this is where you may gasp in shock and horror) — a schedule! Yes, a schedule, because nothing says “bite me, I’m writing” like a set in stone writing routine. Also, without a routine, I tend to flail and panic and instead of writing, I’ll give myself over to multiple bouts of first-person-shooter bot deathmatches, which is really unbecoming in a man of my advanced professional stature and level of male pattern baldness.

The two books in question are The Book of the Dumb and the second novel for Tor, which currently is running around without a title — I had thought of one, but then Patrick Nielsen Hayden, upon hearing it, said “Hmmmm… that sounds like a fantasy title.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that I’m not writing fantasy, I’m writing Science Fiction, which needs sharp, metallic, reflective pointy titles. Which, although I’ve never thought about it before, makes perfect sense. A science fiction book, no matter how good it is, isn’t going to go anywhere with a title like The Fluffy Ponies in the Candy-Coated Space Station of Love! Which is really too bad, if you ask me. So, title to come.

It’s a very interesting time to be writing my particular science fiction novel — the idea I sold to Tor was of (here’s the actual quote) “a diplomatic troubleshooter who solves problems through the use of action scenes and witty dialogue,” and at the moment, we’re living in a time where both diplomatic troubleshooting and witty dialogue have almost nothing to do with our current administration’s plan for resolving thorny international problems (although, to be fair, it’s very big on action scenes).

I don’t think there’s going to be any doubt that the current world situation here on Earth is going to leak into the adventures that will transpire in the book. Not directly, of course — it’s that whole idea of “If you want to send a message, use Western Union” which I whole-heartedly endorse — but certainly it’s food for thought whilst I write.

The temporal appropriateness of writing The Book of the Dumb at this moment in time is of course all too obvious, so I need not belabor the point. Let’s just say that for both books, the timing for me is good, almost too good.

Incidentally, regarding The Book of the Dumb, I’ll have an announcement to make fairly shortly — basically, I’ll be hoping for some audience participation, and I’m writing up the details for that right now. More is coming, so stay tuned.

So I am actually going to start writing the books today? Well, no — for all my deck clearing, I’ve got a couple of barnacles: A couple of assignments for my beloved masters at Official PlayStation Magazine (Hi, Joe!) and a series of additional articles for Uncle John’s which will actually take me a couple of weeks to complete. I’ll begin writing the novel probably as early as tomorrow, with the writing on Dumb to commence after I complete the assignments for Uncle John (they’re being published by the same people, so I’m sure they’d endorse this); in the meantime for Dumb I have some concrete setting-up exercises I need to do (which as I said, I’ll be sharing with the rest of you soon).

What it means that from now through the end of September, I’m primarily in book mode. I’m very excited about this of course — the natural habitat of a writer is to be writing books. Well, that and scrounging toothpick-speared finger foods from wine-and-cheese author events (other author’s events, of course). Unfortunately, I’d have to commute for those. Guess I’ll just have to write instead.